Weighing cases

[Boogie]

I just finished weighing 200 Lapua .308 cases and I'm disappointed with the outcome. This is the first time I've taken the time to weigh cases, mainly because I was told that Lapua was so consistent that I didn't need to, so I have nothing to base it on but for the price I was expecting to see much better results. Out of the 200 I only got 57 that were within .4 grains of each other. I know that most of y'all say sort to within .2 grains but with the weights jumping from 170 to 174.6 grains if I had tried to sort down that far I would have ended up with groups of 10 - 15 some even less.

Am I expecting too much? Do I really have to buy 400 cases to try to get 100 of the same weight?

Or did I get a bad batch? Both boxes were the same lot number.

 

[HillbillyfromAL]

You should probably return those that's a huge difference in weight and there's no way they can shoot consistently.

























Ok seriously you'd have to be one hell of a rifleman for the weight of the cases to be that big of a concern. Just load them up and see how they group. No need to over complicate things. That 4.6 grains could have came from sticky fingers after fondling the brass

 

[Sinus211]

I'm pretty new to the finer points of loading for precision shooting. Would weight differences indicate thicker/thinner case walls resulting in volume/pressure differences?

 

[midmoguy]

I'm pretty new to the finer points of loading for precision shooting. Would weight differences indicate thicker/thinner case walls resulting in volume/pressure differences?

You are correct

 

[J-ROD]

I don't weigh cases but when i did, there was much less difference after all of them had been prepped (flash hole and primer pocket included).
With that being said, sadly i have done more testing with a chrono than actually shooting in matches due to feasibility....i have found nothing to support that weighing cases helps.
Now neck tension, annealing and runout, those are the biggies i worry about.

One exception, i will check win brass just cull out those extremely heavy/light cases and use them for sighters or foulers.

 

[XxWoodsHunterxX]

Just a noob question but does case weight make that big of a difference? What changes does it cause.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD so lay off the spelling critique. Thanks

 

[woodland-ghost]

Case weight usually indicates case volume...ill be another one on the list that doesn't weigh cases

 

[Surgikill]

I weighed fifty lake city pieces the other day and they ranged from 172 grains to 176 grains. I shot the best group I've ever shot and the cases were within 1 grain of each other. No need to be that precise down to .4 grains.

Sent from GS3 Synergy

 

[armorpl8chikn]

This old saw again? How often does this come up?
IT IS A WASTE OF GOOD SHOOTING TIME TO WEIGH CASES.

 

[Rob01]

This old saw again? How often does this come up?
IT IS A WASTE OF GOOD SHOOTING TIME TO WEIGH CASES.

Read that next time you think about weighing cases. Also goes for bullets.

 

[Sniper Uncle]

This old saw again? How often does this come up?
IT IS A WASTE OF GOOD SHOOTING TIME TO WEIGH CASES.

Read that next time you think about weighing cases. Also goes for bullets.

So the moral of this story is that I should spend the time I would have spent weighing cases and bullets actually shooting, and my groups might improve more from the practice of marksmanship techniques than they are likely to from sorting the cases and bullets by weight......

Good, because I would far rather shoot than fool with the scale!

 

[wakajawaka]

One day, I was bored so I sorted 500 new .223 cases in .1gr increments.

I'll never do that again.

Never sorted bullets.

 

[Sinus211]

One day, I was bored so I sorted 500 new .223 cases in .1gr increments.

I'll never do that again.

Never sorted bullets.

That has got to be one of the most OCD hilarious things I've ever seen!! Awesome

 

[XxWoodsHunterxX]

That has got to be one of the most OCD hilarious things I've ever seen!! Awesome

I got anxiety just thinking about doing that. I couldn't sit still that long doing a repetitive thing like that


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD so lay off the spelling critique. Thanks

 

[Sniper Uncle]

Cool picture, though, isn't it?

 

[338RUM runner]

Just trim them to the same weight and go on with Life. LOL. They do look cool in a Bell curve.

 

[aloreman]

I take 20 random peices wiegh them and take an average. Then i sort them heavy and light and throw out the ones that are way out of spec. But i enjoy the reloading process suffer from insomnia and my neighbors get pissy when i touch off a rifle at three am. So im not really wasting any shooting time

 

[Greg Langelius *]

That picture looks like one of my experiments from times past. Sadly, it was mainly an exercise in OCD. Not doing that again! Deliberate and painstaking testing has demonstrated conclusively to me that intuition is a fool's trap. At my age, time lost not only cannot be regained, it's a painful loss.

This question, and practically all like them can be answered simply. Skip the conjecture and give it a try.

It may make a difference, but the difference may not be big enough to actually notice, given the level of equipment excellence, and shooter prowess. Truth is, we all think we shoot better than we actually do, and even with the ideal firearms, in fact especially with ideal firearms, most of our dispersion is shooter-derived. On this vast site, there are probably fewer folks who can consistently see such differences than I have fingers and toes. A) I am not one of them, and B) I have a full compliment of such appendages.

Again; skip the small stuff, get out and shoot, and never stop working on your marksmanship basics. That's where just about all of the real marksmanship improvement will come from.

Greg

 

[JGorski]

Here's 2 groups that between both shots had a ES of 70(top) and 58(bottom) and they still grouped this close at 300yds, you really think if one case had 1.3grs difference in weight that it would make a difference?

 

[lightman]

Just curious, did you trim and prep the cases before you weighed them? I feel like you need to measure the finished product. I don't weigh cases anymore, but when I did my Lapua were closer than that. So were the Norma. Not so much with the Rp, FC and Win. I quit weighing cases because I don't shoot well enough to see the difference. Lightman